A little while ago, I started doing some digging into the privacy sector of cryptocurrencies - How good is the tech? How long has it been established? How many coins use it? What are their drawbacks and limitations? Can a lesser known coin perform just as well? This is an ongoing project which has so far started at the supposed peak of privacy, being Monero (XMR), to the... Verge (XVG) of the supposed bottom. Will I ever cover them all? Probably not. But on this journey I've come across some interesting coins, ideas and developments - BTC Hush is the first one I'll be tackling.
What is BTC Hush?
Well, that's an interesting question. Before I answer that, this question needs to be answered first:
What is Hush?
Hush - Formerly known as Zdash - is a community focused, open source fork of Zcash (ZEC), so incorporates ZEC's Zerocash protocol and zk-SNARK technology. Without going into too much of the technical details here, ZEC is established as one of the upper-tier privacy coins available so Hush is already on a solid base. Hush goes to differentiate itself from just being a currency, by also aiming to be an "all-in-one communications stack", complete with an encrypted messaging system and the ability to create and execute smart contracts through the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Lofty goals and a long term vision, but also without a concrete roadmap with target dates in mind - You'll have to make of that what you will.
Okay, but BTCH?
It's what some people call Roger Ver, but not in this instance.
BTCH has caused quite a stir recently and depending on who you speak to, responses range from 'It's a brilliant, unique idea' to 'just a ZClassic/BTCP wannabe' to 'exit scam, avoid'. So let's break it down a little.
First thing's first - It's not a fork in the traditional sense, but is effectively an airdrop. For every Hush, Supernet, DEX or BTC you own that is under your control (read: in a wallet you own the private keys to) you will receive an equal amount in BTCH. As explained by the team themselves:
[Source: http://btchush.org/#how-do-i-get-my-airdrop]
It’s important to note that to gain from the airdrop you’ll have to have either of the qualifying coins under your control before the deadline of February 1st 12:00 UTC. You can probably see why the term ‘exit scam’ has been mentioned, but is that really an accurate comment to make?
BTCH is being developed as a Komodo (KMD) asset chain with the intention of increasing security, being atomic swap compatible on the BarterDEX exchange and to take end value of the combined coins, without the historical chain data and thus removing the need for replay protection.
This is probably a bad analogy, but I sort of think of it like this:
Imagine Person A watching every baseball game, one by one as they happen for the entire season, noting down every run scored and final score in a report. Person B takes the final report and has the results of the baseball season, without watching a single game as it happened. Both Persons now know the resulting data, but Person B got the data in a lighter way, and is able to carry on from the point of the final report and not go through from the beginning again. In addition, Person B can’t replay the memories of the games because they have no memory of the games – The data isn’t there to do so.
Told you it was a bad one.
Right, but why like this?
Let’s skip the technology for a second to get to the whole reason this is even a thing. To pick out some key quotes from dev jl777:
[Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2008578.msg27788374#msg27788374 - Apologies if the text is too small]
This was fairly revealing for several reasons. As we know by now forks basically end up being ‘fre muny’, so this allows BTCH to fund development for Hush, give hodlers what Bitcoin Private will do (but potentially better), and allow BTCH to possibly to exist for research and development because it will now retain the ongoing development that Komodo will bring to it. If that’s the case, you have to admit that’s amazingly smart by them.
So why the hate?
I’m gonna keep this brief: BTCP needed someone to code replay protection as they didn’t have the ability to do it themselves, Hush dev Duke Leto steps in and offers to code for a fee to which all parties agree. He codes, he gets paid, everyone’s happy. Shortly or damn near instantly after BTCH is a thing and Duke comments frequently how poor and outdated the code is for BTCP, how without his help they’d have no replay protection and how BTCH won't even need it. Of course, the BTCP community rounds on him, and his DGAF persona on Twitter just fans the flames.
So who are the people behind BTCH?
Duke Leto: Duke has commit bits to dozens of free and open source projects and has been involved in the Free+Open Source community for 20+ years. You will see his name in Firefox about:credits for helping their Javascript engine use less memory as well as on the "Nature" publication for the Tomato Genome, as part of his work with BioPerl. He also helped design the backend of OpenTreeOfLife, where scientists around the world can study how all living things are related in an open and accessible way. Duke writes code that improves the world and optimizes for increasing Freedom for average folks. [Source: https://myhush.org/]
That’s from Hush’s website, and the Firefox and Tomato Genome claims are verifiable. Seems to be (and class himself as) a literal bounty hunter coder before settling down with Hush.
JL777: Noted as Komodo’s lead dev, 14,649 commits on their Github, last one just over a month ago - He's been around a long time with his work on NXT and various linked projects.
Closing thoughts
I’ll admit right now that most of my research has been more on BTCH than BTCP, BTCP has been revealed for a while now and I think most people are aware of what it is and how it goes about it. BTCH on the other hand is the equivalent of a company announcing a project no-one even knew was in progress, and perhaps don’t know what it’s even doing. In this case, BTCH is best described as experimental tech. It’s certainly got my curiosity.
I’d rather not go BTCP vs BTCH, but there’s definitely some questions to be asked of both:
BTCH: What will be the value of BTCH if there’s no-one to buy it – Has the FUD already damaged it? Will Hush be dumped post snapshot – Will it recover short term? Is this really no more than a crafty exit for the devs?
BTCP: What happens if there aren’t enough miners to support it – Does this exist to just gain money from a fork with no future? Is it just FUD, or is this really is a fork of an older version of ZEC – And if so Why?
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I will be aiming to do a followup on BTCH whenever the full whitepaper is released, to hopefully get a more detailed view of what makes BTCH tick - Until then, do you have a comment or criticism? Have I glossed over something or perhaps given you something to think about? If so, let me know!
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